Good to know you’re on the case as well! It seems our research has brought us to the same conclusion. I also discovered that Original Business Name has closed down for good, and there’s a new business now running there: New Business Name.
With this in mind, I believe it’s necessary to update the details on Google Maps to show these changes. Here’s what I’ll do:
Report the closure: I’ll indicate [Original Business Name] as “Permanently Closed” on Google Maps. This keeps the map up to date for all.
Add the new business: I’ll add a new listing for [New Business Name], ensuring to provide information such as its name, category, address, phone number (if it’s visible), website (if it exists), and any photos I may have taken.
Check out the new business (if applicable): If I get to try [New Business Name], I’ll post a truthful and useful review to help others.
It’s all about keeping the map current and helpful, right? Thanks for pointing this out – it’s wonderful to work together on keeping our local data current!
Yes @AdamGT, I’d leave it as is.
It’s Google’s responsibility to manage information tied to a closed business.
What happens to the points earned and view counts?
Contributing took valuable time, and a closed business is beyond my control.
I’d appreciate your thoughts and others’ perspectives on this.
Your lists example is interesting @TonysLists. You said that you haven’t noticed one of these (Unknown place) yet but you went on to say that you have seen popular tourist destinations disappear from their previous location so to my mind, by definition that would mean that the original tourist destination would indeed become an unknown place! If you check through your contributions you will see that in fact you do have Unknown places. Here’s just one example I found:
So you’ve undertaken the investigation @TonysLists as I have done and you find there isn’t any systemic issue it’s just that the business has permanently closed so what would you do now?
While you have not encountered Unknown places yourself @KetanChhaniyara I was curious and decided to check your contributions. It may surprise you but I found at least 50 Unknown places in your contributions. Here’s just a couple I found and please note I haven’t done this to embarrass you but to help you see something that you may not be aware of. Some if not all of these Unknown places might benefit from your investigation.
I was referring to my spreadsheet where I’m tracking the views. So lets call the place POI One and I list that in my spreadsheet every month. When Maps dropped the name and called it Unknown Place, I updated my spreadsheet to POI One (Unknown Place) and continued tracking for a few more months to see what would happen.
Note that this only got on to my tracker because it was a video. I didn’t immediately recognize it with the corresponding photo of the same place, because I have a minimum-views threshold for those, to stop the tracked list from getting too long.
(I’ve edited the previous post for greater clarity on the point you raised).
It’s good that you understand that the views are frozen @TravellerTom. Yes while views don’t count for Local Guide points, they do contribute to total media views so perhaps that’s a good enough reason to just do nothing and leave all these orphans meet up together at that Unknown place
Hi @AdamGT, I hadn’t noticed that - thanks for pointing it out!
The screenshot of my profile shows two places (and there may be more) where I uploaded photos while creating them.
I’ve seen & noticed this before: the place gets approved, but the photos remain tagged as “unknown place.” Thanks for bringing this up. Any thoughts on why this happens or how to fix it?
This is precisely what this topic is all about - sharing our knowledge and experiences so that we can all better understand exactly what these Unknown places are all about and then see how to best handle them. For example, given that it’s most likely that no one other than ourselves will ever see them again, do we delete the media associated with Unknown places or as @TravellerTom and others have suggested, just accept that while they are now orphans, they earned views and contribute to our overall photo views so just leave them in the Unknown place bucket.
Wow a double whammy! Are they both for the same POI?
Oh @EvaBar this is such an interesting case as I know other Local Guides do have contributions that are very seasonal but in your case yo say it’s an event! WHat sort of event are you talking about?
Again interesting but again you talk of an event. Events obviously happen at a place but are these events pins on the Map? For example on Saturday my partner and I attended the Melbourne International Comedy Festival. I took some pics of the event but would be hard pressed to add these to a POI under that name. However, the event was held at the Athenaeum Theatre so as in this example, together with a shot of the theatre front itself, I did add the event media to that POI on Maps as an example of the events hosted at the theatre.
BTW I do know about the email you speak of and have seen this happen in the case of of a certain class of places as in t he following example:
They sound very much like policy compliance issues rather than places that for one reason or another no longer exist. On this, see this comment by @PrasadVR
Yes me too and once again this was one of the objectives of this post and as you will see by some of my replies here, while some of these Local Guides may have been unaware or believe they have not encountered Unknown places, I imagine that they will be surprised to see that they have.
Yes I can appreciate this Eva. As I said above, do we delete the media associated with Unknown places or as @TravellerTom and others have suggested, just accept that while they are now orphans, they earned views and contribute to our overall photo views so just leave them in the Unknown place bucket.
Oh yes, fully aware that hunt down the unproductives @TerryPG
This seems to be a very common reason for Unknown places.
It sounds very much like a number of Local Guides who have joined the discussion here might wish the same. Hoping that this topic educates them and through the knowledge gained gets them to at least investigate and then make informed decisions.
If you learnt something then I have been rewarded for posting this topic @ShailendraOjha and if and when we meet face-to-face the reward will be even greater as I will be rewarded with your father’s wisdom
Well done @Gvipin, your detailed strategy is a good one but let me continue being the Devil’s advocate here and ask you what would you do with any media (photos and/or videos) that you added to the old business and now flagged as an Unknown place?
Google does this by flagging that the business has closed and reclassifying your media (photos and/or videos etc) to Unknown place. You do understand this right?
As well as the many different situations encountered and mentioned by Local Guides in this discussion, I hope you will have gained my thoughts and that of the others from this discussion.
Ah thanks for explaining this @tony_b as I’m sure others as well as myself didn’t catch on to what you originally meant and great to see that you edited your previous comment for greater clarity.
I’m pleased that my curiosity has helped you see something that you hadn’t noticed.
Yes the screenshot was simply to show you that you did in fact have media attached to that Unknown place but as I mentioned, I saw at least 50 of your photos similarly flagged by the Maps AI.
I think the answer to your question why this happens is well covered in the discussion so I suggest you read the discussion again. Regarding your second question, with at least 50 Unknown places it’s not possible for me to give you my thoughts on what you need to do but as I mentioned in my earlier reply, you should investigate each and based on what you have learnt from this discussion make an informed decision in each case.
Finally, I am planning to post other topics similar to this and I highly recommend that you look out for these and join the discussion.
Thank you, @AdamGT, for your detailed insights and guidance. Your expertise is invaluable, and I look forward to engaging in future discussions on this topic.
Sorry for the duplicate, in case someone already mentioned it:
If you don’t know how to find all unknown places, using the Web browser go to “My Contributions”->“Photos”->“By Date”, scroll down as far as possible (fastest by using the End key), then use Find (Ctrl-F) and search for “Unknown Place” (or whatever it is in your language). Ctrl-G lets you jump to the next. Ctrl-G works in Chrome and Firefox, but might be different for other browsers.
I don’t know, if there is a way using the mobile app.
So never made it onto the map. Seems fairly harmless, so no further action for now. Maybe someday I’ll try adding the place again or someone else will be successful.
Good point, @AdamGT Ji. For media on an “Unknown” closed place, I would:
Check relevance: Is it specific to the old business and now useless?
Prioritize new: Focus on taking fresh media for New Business
Likely action: Won’t actively transfer old media; better to start new for accuracy.
I also consider the potential value: could any part of the media still be useful or provide historical context? Perhaps a photo of the building’s exterior that hasn’t drastically changed might still help someone locate the new business. This is a long shot, but worth a quick consideration.
The goal is to have helpful, current info for the new business. What do you think?
Not a great error message on mobile. On web, youll see “Place does not exist” and it won’t even be selectable.
But if you search for the place by name, it still exists, with thousands of reviews over the past two years. I’m assuming the old record was added to this list over 2 years ago, but something happened causing the old place to disappear and new place (with the exavt same name) to appear in roughly the same location.
I suspect all of the old reviews and photos were lost, but don’t know if those photos still appear with “Unknown place” or some other way under contributions.
